THE rotting coffins of the dead were exposed at a cemetery as hundreds of gipsies arrived to bury a loved one last Tuesday.

The grave of John “Slasher” Loveridge at Chobham Cemetery collapsed as his friends and relatives arrived to bury him.

The gipsies demanded another grave after they were greeted with the macabre sight. The exposed coffins were buried around seven years ago.

Mr Loveridge’s grave collapsed because the cemetery’s management is overfilling the area, according to gravedigger Neil Curtis.

He branded the cemetery — run by a team of councillors from Chobham and West End parish councils — a “shambles.”

Mr Curtis said: “The grave space clearly wasn’t big enough. We couldn’t use shoring to support the grave because it was too narrow.

“While we were digging the grave we were exposing the coffins on either side. The sides started to fall in. At the end of the day we dug the grave in another place which the gipsies chose — it could have been reserved by someone else, we just didn’t know.”

Mr Curtis — a gravedigger for 30 years — said the plot was only three feet wide. The legal minimum is four feet. He said plots were being “crammed in” at the cemetery, causing graves to be dug too narrow and, in some cases, too shallow.

Mr Curtis said: “Their system doesn’t work. It’s been explained to them before and they just aren’t listening. They are just cramming them in closer and closer together. As far as I’m concerned this has to change.

“I’m not coming back if I have to fit someone else in a tight space at Chobham Cemetery again.”

The debacle is the latest in a series of disputes involving the cemetery’s management, currently presided over by Chobham parish clerk Chris Chaney.

In 2002, before Mr Chaney took over, a body was buried in a plot already reserved for £500 by someone else. The gravedigger involved claimed the mix-up was caused by the plot not being clearly marked.

In 2003 a grieving widow found on the day of her husband’s funeral she would not be getting the double grave she had paid £100 for. The mistake was put down to a high water table.

Last year, a bereaved son was paid nearly £2,000 in compensation for a blunder that saw a body being buried in a plot he had reserved next to his mother’s grave. He had paid £500 for the plot.

Mr Curtis claimed the mistakes were caused by cemetery management not marking the plots where graves were to be dug.

Following last year’s mistake he said Mr Chaney had agreed to mark plots in the future but this new policy had not been adhered to.

Mr Chaney insisted that he did now clearly mark the plots but declined to comment any further on problems at the cemetery.

The parish council has denied being at fault in all the cases. In the 2002 incident and the incident last year, it said the grave diggers were responsible for what had gone wrong.

Mr Curtis, who himself paid thousands of pounds in legal fees over last year’s debacle, said: “It’s a total shambles up there.”

The debacle is the latest in a series of disputes involving the cemetery’s management, currently presided over by Chobham parish clerk Chris Chaney.

In 2002, before Mr Chaney took over, a body was buried in a plot already reserved for £500 by someone else. The gravedigger involved claimed the mix-up was caused by the plot not being clearly marked.

In 2003 a grieving widow found on the day of her husband’s funeral she would not be getting the double grave she had paid £100 for. The mistake was put down to a high water table.

Last year, a bereaved son was paid nearly £2,000 in compensation for a blunder that saw a body being buried in a plot he had reserved next to his mother’s grave. He had paid £500 for the plot.

Mr Curtis claimed the mistakes were caused by cemetery management not marking the plots where graves were to be dug.

Following last year’s mistake he said Mr Chaney had agreed to mark plots in the future but this new policy had not been adhered to.

Mr Chaney insisted that he did now clearly mark the plots but declined to comment any further on problems at the cemetery.

The parish council has denied being at fault in all the cases. In the 2002 incident and the incident last year, it said the grave diggers were responsible for what had gone wrong.

Mr Curtis, who himself paid thousands of pounds in legal fees over last year’s debacle, said: “It’s a total shambles up there.”